Some pieces of music, like Beethoven’s Fifth or the William Tell Overture, become so overplayed as to become virtual cliche. The same can be said of Mozart’s Serenade #13 in G Major for strings, which is better known for the title Mozart gave it: Eine kleine nachtmusik, or “A Little Night Music”.
What kind of night was Mozart thinking of here? Clearly he wasn’t thinking of the night itself, with its darkness falling over Vienna or its surrounding landscape. I think he was rather thinking of inside, with candles and fires burning. This music is too bright, too joyous, and too elegant to suggest an external darkness.
Eine kleine nachtmusik is likely best known for its opening movement and its opening bars in particular. Milos Forman uses those bars to convey how well-known Mozart’s music is known even years after his death, when a bitter Antonio Salieri plays that famous opening phrase for the priest who has come to hear his confession, after the priest has previously failed to identify any of Salieri’s own melodies, each one having been “very famous in its day”. The inner movements and the finale contain their own sparkle and magic, though.
